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Bad Apologies

Topman has withdrawn the t-shirt pictured above (and another that suggested that women are dogs).

The shirt is intended to be humorous. It would appear that Topman is attempting to point out how apologies offered by batterers to their victims are often disingenuous. By adumbrating the standard set of meaningless apologies on a handy checklist to be worn on a shirt, Topman seems to be saying

“Ha ha guys! We’ve all been there, right?. You get carried away and, next thing you know, you are pummeling your girlfriend. Then, of course, your girlfriend wants you to be all sorry and everything. Recognize any of these excuses fellas? lol!”

Whatever the interpretation, it seems clear that the shirt is trivializing (even condoning) domestic violence.

“We have received some negative feedback regarding two of our printed T-shirts. Whilst we would like to stress that these T-shirts were meant to be light-hearted and carried no serious meaning, we have made the decision to remove these from store and online as soon as possible. We would like to apologise to those who may have been offended by these designs.”

It seems that the public relations team behind that apology is engaging in the same sort of worthless apologizing depicted on the shirt itself.